The fluorescent lights buzzed like angry hornets above Kenji's cluttered apartment. At 25, he'd imagined himself drowning in spreadsheets, not in his own sweat as dengue fever cooked him alive. Typical, he thought, glaring at the half-finished Batman fanfic on his laptop. I get isekai'd by a mosquito. No truck-kun, no epic death—just a damn bug.
His vision blurred.
The last thing he saw was Monett's name on the screen—the chubby bookstore owner he'd created as a throwaway character.
2:17 AM
Kenji woke to the smell of mildew and ink. His head throbbed as if someone had driven a railroad spike through his temple. The room spun—wrong, all wrong—as he struggled to sit up. His hands, thick and unfamiliar, groped at a waistcoat stretched taut over a round belly.
"What the hell?" he croaked, voice deeper, older.
A cracked mirror hung on the wall. The face staring back was Monett's: jowly, soft, with eyes that flickered faintly crimson in the predawn gloom.
Memories that weren't his slithered into his mind—Monett's memories. Running this crumbling bookstore. The Monett family's fall from grace. The way Gotham's shadows seemed to breathe at night.
April 15, 1925 | Morning
The gas lamps outside sputtered as dawn crept over Gotham's jagged skyline. Monett pressed his forehead to the bookstore's grimy window, watching horse-drawn carriages rattle past alongside shiny new automobiles—a city caught between eras. A newspaper on the desk screamed the date in bold ink: April 15, 1925.
Monett blinked at the headline: Thomas Wayne Expands Free Clinics Across Gotham. He remembered writing about Thomas Wayne—the brilliant surgeon and philanthropist married to Martha Kane, heir to the Kane fortune. They were Gotham's golden couple, their names synonymous with hope in a city teetering on the edge of darkness.
"Nineteen twenty-five," Monett muttered to himself with a bitter laugh. "Bruce Wayne isn't even born yet."
8:00 PM
Monett flipped the shop's sign to CLOSED. The day had blurred into a haze of muscle memory—he'd somehow known how to haggle with scholars over rare books, how to brew tea the way Monett liked it. His tea now.
As he dusted the shelves, his fingers brushed a silver ring tucked behind a copy of Leaves of Grass. The moment he slipped it on, his mind lurched. Visions of a shattered ship, crystalline corpses, and weapons humming with alien energy flooded his thoughts.
"Okay," he whispered, hiding the ring in his pocket. "That's… new."
11:23 PM
The gas lamps outside flickered as Monett stepped into the alley. Gotham's nights had teeth—he could feel it in the way the fog clung to his skin, in the distant wail of a police whistle.
Then he saw them.
Two figures emerged from the shadows, pale as corpses, their eyes glowing like dying embers.
"You'll do," one hissed, fangs glinting.
Midnight
Pain exploded in Monett's neck as fangs pierced flesh. Then—fire. Their blood burned through him, carrying visions of a cosmic prison, a ship adrift among dead stars, and symbols that twisted like living things.
The vampires recoiled, ash crumbling from their fingertips. "What are you?" one gasped before disintegrating.
Monett collapsed against the brick wall, his hands trembling as raw strength surged through his muscles. His skin prickled under the gaslight's glow, suddenly wrong, as if sunlight itself might scorch him now. Silver, he realized, spotting a coin in the gutter. Just looking at it made his stomach churn.
2:04 AM
Back in the shop, Monett stared at the ring. The alien corpses in his mind's eye seemed to watch him.
"So," he muttered, loading a rusted revolver from under the counter. "Vampires, alien tech, and Gotham before Batman." Somewhere outside, a church bell tolled.